


Hotfix

by LerxstInSpace



Series: Broken Mirror-verse [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Reality Black Paladin Adam (Voltron), Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-11-04 03:44:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17890862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LerxstInSpace/pseuds/LerxstInSpace
Summary: It was easy, after a while. Just swipe left once a day and get on with it. Don’t think too much about it. Don’t think about what they’d do to him if he made that appointment. Don’t think too much about what they’d find. Don’t think too much about how much time is left on the clock. Easy.And then Adam came back and all of that came crashing down around him.[In which Adam finds out about that daily phone call Shiro has been dodging, and Shiro finds out that his new body is not quite an exact copy of his old one.]





	Hotfix

The thing was, Shiro felt fine.

 

No, really. He felt great. At least, he did now. He’d felt pretty wonky after he woke up in this body--hell, just _having_ a body again had felt pretty wonky for a while. And then there was that bit of technical difficulty when they first started his new arm up. But after that... God, he’d felt like shit for so long that the first thing out of his mouth when he suddenly _didn’t_ anymore was “I feel strange.”

 

He felt absolutely, perfectly, completely fine. Better than he’d felt in years. Possibly better than he’d _ever_ felt. Well--physically, at least, the mental front was a whole other story. But physically? He felt _fine._ He had his tired days, sure, but there was a war on and so did everyone else. For the most part, he felt strong and energetic and none of the issues that had plagued him for so long bothered him anymore.

 

No headaches--okay, he got headaches now and then but they were the normal kind. The kind that eventually went away on their own, maybe with the help of a couple over-the-counter pills and a big glass of water, maybe some good protein and carbs that didn’t come in the form of a bar or a shake and didn’t come from the vending machine, maybe a nap. The kind he could work through if he had to, the kind that was more annoying than genuinely painful. Not the kind that left him curled up in a dark quiet room for two or three days, half-conscious on weapons-grade meds that barely dulled the pain enough to let him pass out for a few minutes here and there--assuming he could keep them down long enough for them to work which, half the time, he couldn’t.

 

No hands or feet just randomly going offline for a minute, certainly none of that shit where he’d be going about his business and next thing he knew he was on the floor and he’d just up and lost five or ten or twenty minutes. All of him worked as expected pretty much all the time. He didn’t even need the damn electrostimulator anymore. Maybe his new arm was doing that for him? Whatever it was, it was working and that was all that mattered.

 

So far, nothing he’d eaten or drunk since he’d gotten back to Earth bothered him even the least little bit. There had been some issues with caffeine setting off the headaches and such before--not all the time, but enough that his doctor had told him to give it up. And he’d been having issues with anything too greasy or too spicy triggering some ugly side effects of the meds he hadn’t taken since... well, since the Galra got him. But he could drink coffee again--full-caf black coffee, just the way he liked it best. He could eat pizza and cheeseburgers and the really good spicy ramen, God, he’d missed that so much. He could even drink a beer once in a while, not that he had a whole lot of opportunities to these days, but it was nice to be able to have one with his ramen again.

 

He was sleeping ...fairly well? Okay, maybe not so much but given all the shit going on these days, _nobody_ was sleeping great so that one he could just sort of handwave off.

 

The point of all this was, he felt _fine._

 

And yet.

 

And. Fucking. _Yet._

 

Every day. Every single damn day, his phone rang. Every day he pulled it out of his pocket and saw the words _Garrison Med Neuro_ and swiped left and put it back and tried to go on about his business like it was just a wrong number or a telemarketer or some other harmless little nuisance.

 

He knew why they were calling. They wanted him to come in and get scanned and tested and checked from head to toe, inside and out, to see what kind of shape he was in. And what was the point of that? What was the point of spending a day going through shit that was almost sure to set off panic attacks or nightmares or both when he already knew what kind of shape he was in?

 

Because despite feeling absolutely, perfectly fine, Shiro knew he was almost certainly on borrowed time. This body was, as far as he could tell, an exact copy of his original one right down to the fillings in his teeth and the tiny mole on his inner thigh and every single scar no matter how tiny or how faint, and an exact copy would have included the disease that had been slowly killing him over the last few years.

 

That “two or three years” they’d given him was going on four now.

 

Somehow, he’d hit a snooze button on that countdown timer over his head, and he knew he couldn’t keep doing it forever. Someday it’d run down to zero. He couldn’t tell when, but it was a given that it was going to run out someday and why bother spending a day at Medical getting scanned and prodded and jabbed just to have someone tell him that very thing?

 

Of course there was another possibility--that he felt fine because somehow by some miracle he _was_ fine now. It wasn’t impossible, he supposed. From what Keith and the rest of the Paladins had told him, they got the impression that Haggar had meant the whole clone thing to be a much longer game and she only pulled his strings when she did because Lotor forced her hand. And that would have required that the clone actually survive long enough to see whatever plans Haggar originally had through to the end.

 

But again: it was an exact copy. That meant it was more likely to have the damn disease than not, and it wouldn’t be helpful to _anyone_ for Shiro to fling himself down a rabbit hole of false hope. Least of all himself.

 

Would knowing exactly when his clock was likely to run out be any better than just… doing what he needed to do while he could, as long as he could?

 

That’s how he went through those first few months back on Earth. Doing his job, doing what he needed to do, and not answering that damn call. It was easy, after a while. Just swipe left once a day and get on with it. Don’t think too much about it. Don’t think about what they’d do to him if he made that appointment. Don’t think too much about what they’d find. Don’t think too much about how much time is left on the clock. Easy.

 

And then Adam came back and all of that came crashing down around him.

 

* * *

 

The trouble started when Shiro’s phone rang at lunch one day and Keith caught a glimpse of the screen while he was swiping left.

 

“That’s the neurologist,” Keith said. “Is _that_ who’s been calling you every day since we got back?”

 

“Yeah.” Shiro put his phone away, and Keith just stared at him. “...what?”

 

“You don’t need to answer it?”

 

“No.”

 

“Oh.” Keith went back to his lunch, but Shiro could see the gears turning in his head. “So... you’re better now, huh.”

 

 _Sure,_ Shiro thought. _Let’s go with that, as long as you don’t ask_ me _to believe it._ “Yep.”

 

“Really.” Keith raised an eyebrow. “Then why is my bullshit detector going off?”

 

“Your bullshit detector needs recalibrated.” Shiro concentrated on his lunch. Despite the fact that he hadn’t taken those damn meds in ages, he still had the faint nagging worry in the back of his mind that this greasy burger was going to come back to haunt him later. “I’m fine, Keith.”

 

“Have you been to the doctor since we got back, or nah?”

 

“Hello?” Shiro held up his right hand and wiggled his fingers. “I didn’t do this myself.”

 

“You know which doctor I mean. The one that just called you. The one that’s _been_ calling you. The one you--for some reason--don’t want to talk to. Even though you’re better.”

 

“Do I even need to tell you who you sound like right now?” Shiro snapped, and he immediately regretted it for a number of reasons. Mostly, because he knew dragging Adam’s name into this conversation was the worst thing he could have possibly done.

 

“Oh yeah. Speaking of Adam...” Keith said, no longer even bothering with the pretense of a casual attitude, “the one on this side, I mean--after you disappeared he told me how bad it really was. He told me everything, Shiro. Everything you _didn’t_ tell me. The headaches? The seizures?”

 

Shiro pushed his soggy fries around a little more and gave up. He wasn’t hungry anymore. “Okay. So I didn’t tell you all the details. You didn’t need to worry about--”

 

“Does _this_ Adam know?”

 

The question hit Shiro like a boot in the midsection. “No. I haven’t told him yet.”

 

“Why not?” Keith shrugged. “If you’re not sick anymore, why not tell him you were before and now you’re not?”

 

A muscle in Shiro’s jaw twitched. He didn’t answer that. He didn’t need to.

 

“You could hide that shit from me. You couldn’t hide it from him before, and you’re not going to be able to hide it from this one for long.” Keith said. “I promise I won’t tell him, but you know he’s going to find out sooner or later. Might as well be straight from you.”

 

He was right. Of course he was. Shiro knew it. He’d known it ever since Adam came back.

 

But god _damn,_ he hated it.

 

* * *

 

Shiro didn't know the details, but he knew this much: something horrible had happened to him in the reality Adam came from.

 

Adam still didn’t want to talk about it. Even now, when he was starting to settle into his new life in this reality, any time the subject came up he shut down the conversation in a way that made it clear that he didn’t want to discuss it, didn’t even want to think about it. Shiro tried to press the issue once. Only once. Turned out that issue was close to the top of a list of things that sent Adam into full-on panic attacks, and Shiro still felt horrible about it. And that, he supposed, was part of the reason he didn’t want to tell Adam about his condition--whatever there might be to tell him about it. Adam had lived through absolute hell in his reality, and _this_ was the thing he still had the hardest time talking about.

 

But Shiro had gotten bits and pieces here and there. Enough to cobble together an idea of what had happened to him.

 

He knew that he was originally supposed to fly the Kerberos mission.

 

He knew they’d gotten married two months before the mission, because they wanted to make it official in case something went wrong.

 

He knew something went wrong _before_ the mission--wrong enough that Adam ended up flying it instead.

 

And then there was the way Adam reacted to certain things. Like the time Adam walked into his office one day to bring him some lunch and noticed that bottle of over-the-counter painkillers on his desk. Like the way Adam liked to listen to his heartbeat when they cuddled on one couch or another, because it sounded so much _stronger_ on this side. Like the way Adam just sort of blanked out for a minute the other day when Shiro tried to pick up a freshly microwaved breakfast-meat-on-a-biscuit thing with his bare flesh-and-blood hand a little sooner than he should have and dropped it on the floor.

 

Yeah, that was enough for Shiro to get a vague idea of what happened to him. And it broke his heart to think he might have to tell Adam that it was going to happen on this side too someday.

 

So he didn’t.

 

 _There is absolutely no way this brilliant strategy could backfire on you,_ he told himself on a daily basis, his own internal voice dripping with sarcasm.

 

And then it finally did backfire.

 

* * *

 

Adam had kind of gotten into the habit of bringing him lunch whenever he had an off-duty day, and by this point he just sort of let himself in. So it wasn’t a surprise when the door to Shiro’s office opened and Adam came in one early afternoon.

 

They were taking things slow on the physical front right now, at least while Adam was still getting his bearings in this new reality. But sometimes they still ended up on one couch or another snuggling into the wee hours of the morning, and sometimes they ended up sleeping like that. Which they’d done last night, on Adam’s couch. And Adam had been in a _really_ snuggly mood and their cuddle session had gradually turned into a cuddle-and-light-makeout session. Nothing below the waist, both of them kept their clothes on, but… it was nice. So Shiro was particularly glad to see him today, because he’d spent most of the morning thinking about how nice all that was, and it had kept his mind off the other various nagging worries that usually bothered him. Like that damn daily call which, for some strange reason, he hadn’t gotten yet. He considered that a small blessing and he wasn’t going to question it too much.

 

Until he looked up.

 

Adam’s hands were empty. He wasn’t here to bring Shiro his lunch. And that was unusual, yes, but not alarming. No, what was alarming was the look on Adam’s face. It wasn’t something Shiro could put a name to but it was shock and hurt and anger all in one.

 

“Hey,” Shiro said, getting up with every intention of sweeping Adam into a hug because he knew right away that something was horribly wrong. But Adam pulled away from him and slapped the panel to shut the door and now this close, Shiro could see him trembling, could see the tension in his shoulders and his jaw.

 

“Hey,” Shiro said again, softer. “Adam. What happened?”

 

Adam didn’t say anything. He just reached into his pocket and pulled out a phone.

 

 _Shiro’s_ phone.

 

“You forgot this,” Adam said, and there was something in the tone of his voice that made Shiro’s blood congeal into icy slush in his veins. “I wasn’t trying to check up on you. I _swear._ You _know_ I don’t do that.”

 

 _Oh fuck,_ Shiro thought, staring at the phone, feeling the color drain out of his face because all at once he knew what this was about and he was absolutely not ready for it, oh _fuck--_

 

“It rang and I just.” Adam shrugged. “I just looked over. Like you do. Then I saw who it was and--goddammit, Takashi, I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t have answered it, but I just--”

 

“Oh shit. Adam, please don’t, _I can’t do this right now--”_

 

“It was just--it’s automatic, okay, on my side if they called I had to answer it because it was about you and--” He swallowed hard. It sounded painful. _“When the fuck were you going to tell me!?”_

 

Shiro all but collapsed into his chair, head in his hands.

 

“When’s the last time you went?” Adam asked him, much softer, but in that distinct tone of voice that meant he would not tolerate any bullshit.

 

“Before Kerberos,” Shiro said, and he heard Adam make a weird little choking noise.

 

“How long did they give you?”

 

Shiro shook his head.

 

“Goddammit, Takashi, _answer me!”_

 

“Two or three years.” Shiro didn’t look up. He couldn’t. “It’s going on four. I--look, i know this isn’t an excuse, okay, but _I feel fine--_ ”

 

“Yeah,” Adam said. “You felt fine on my side too. You had bad days, you had headaches and side effects from your meds and shit but you still felt fine most of the time.” Shiro heard him swallow again. “You felt _fine_ the morning you went in for a routine fucking physical and I got a call from your doctor telling me if you hadn’t already been at Medical you would have been _dead_ by the time anyone got to you!”

 

Adam wasn’t crying. Shiro still couldn’t look up at him, but he could tell that much. No, he’d long since come out the other side of that.

 

Shiro tried to say something. Anything. _Anything._

 

“I’m sorry,” was what finally came out. It didn’t seem like enough. It couldn’t be. Nothing could be, but what else could he say? “I didn’t know how to tell you. I’m sorry, Adam. I’m so sorry.”

 

Neither of them said anything else for a long time.

 

Then Adam took the two steps to his desk.

 

“I told them I was your assistant,” Adam said in that horrible flat tone, and he slapped Shiro’s phone onto his desk. “Your appointment’s at 0900 tomorrow.”

 

And then he left without waiting for a response.

 

* * *

 

Fuck. _Fuck!_

 

What was he going to do about this? Cancel that appointment, obviously! Just call Neurology, tell them there’d been a misunderstanding, a wrong number, someone playing a weird prank, something, _anything_ to get out of that appointment.

 

But no. He wasn’t going to do that and he knew it from the start. He knew he needed to go. He’d known it for months. And he guessed that maybe this was the kick in the ass he’d needed to get him to do the damn thing.

 

Now that the shock was starting to wear off it pissed him _extremely_ off that Adam had gone and made the damn appointment for him under arguably false pretenses--well, technically he _was_ Shiro’s second-in-command and thus maybe sort of assistant if one went strictly by rank, and also Shiro was technically--if not legally in this reality--his husband. But arguably false pretenses or no, it didn’t change the fact that Shiro knew perfectly goddamn well he needed to do this.

 

He got as much work done as he could without leaving his office or speaking to another sentient being in person, because he was certain that he was going to end up snapping at someone and nobody wanted that, least of all him. As it was, he sent Keith a text he regretted the second he hit “send:” _he found out and now I have a neuro appt tomorrow. Happy?_

 

Then he sent a follow-up: _All of this has me in a really bad place right now but that’s not an excuse for being an asshole. I’m sorry._

 

A little while later, the response came: _oh shit. it’s ok, I don’t blame you. Keep me posted?_

 

After that, Shiro decided he probably shouldn’t speak to any sentient beings by any means for a while, and he went home.

 

He changed into a T-shirt and sweatpants, hung up his uniform, and then muted his phone and just sort of fell onto the couch and did his best to turn his brain off for the rest of the night. If the shit hit the fan there were official ways of getting hold of him. Otherwise, _fuck it._

 

He wasn’t sure how long he lay there staring at the ceiling before he heard the soft little knock on his door. He seriously considered ignoring it for a minute. Someone trying to get hold of him for official reasons wasn’t going to knock like that.

 

Someone who maybe felt bad about borderline invading his privacy and yelling at him--all of it totally justified, granted--might knock like that.

 

Adam couldn’t even look him in the eye when he answered the door. He opened his mouth and tried to say something, then closed it again and shook his head. This time when Shiro tried to hug him, he didn’t pull away.

 

“I’m sorry,” Adam finally said. “I’m not going to break the rule.”

 

“It’s my fault. I should have told you up front.” Shiro kissed the side of Adam’s head. They’d had a rule in Adam’s reality--they didn’t go to bed mad at each other. Adam said they’d never broken it.

 

They hadn’t had that rule here, had they? Was _that_ what changed everything between them on Adam’s side?

 

“You want to talk about it some more?” Shiro whispered, rubbing Adam’s back.

 

“Yeah. I...” Adam swallowed hard. “I need to tell you what happened to you on my side.”

 

 _“Shit.”_ This was exactly what Shiro had been afraid of--that the conversation he didn’t want to have and the conversation Adam didn’t want to have were going to intersect. “Are you sure?”

 

“If I don’t do it now I’m going to chicken out.”

 

“‘Kay.” Shiro gently steered Adam towards the couch, closed the door, and went to put some coffee on.

 

“It really doesn’t give you any trouble?” Adam asked as the coffee started to brew, and Shiro shook his head.

 

“It… kind of did, for a while. Before I left.” He shrugged and poured Adam a cup.and added the cream and sugar he only kept because Adam liked it in his. “I wasn’t supposed to have caffeine at all but sometimes... y’know. Pilots, right? Usually it was fine, but if I had too much or it was too strong it’d--”

 

“It’d set off a migraine. Yeah. That was… I think the second thing you had to give up.” Adam snorted out a soft laugh as Shiro poured his own coffee. “First was alcohol but you didn’t really drink much anyway, so you were fine with...” He trailed off there, and gave Shiro a weird look. “Wait. It _did?_ But now it doesn’t.”

 

“Don’t.” Shiro shook his head and sat down next to him. “Don’t go there.”

 

“But that’s a new body, maybe you’re--”

 

 _“Adam.”_ He reached over and laid his hand over Adam’s. “Please. Don’t _._ It’s just going to make this harder.” He swallowed hard. “If we start thinking like that and I go tomorrow and they tell me it’s--” He shook his head again. “It’s an exact copy. Okay? An exact copy. Do you understand what that means? Please just _don’t.”_  Shiro squeezed his hand and then let it go. “Maybe… maybe this wasn’t a good idea after all. Us getting back together, when I’m--you deserve better, okay, after everything you’ve been through you deserve better than this--”

 

Adam did not quite slam his mug down--it was still way too full for that--but he didn’t exactly set it down gently, either.  “Oh, no you fucking don’t.” He shook his head and narrowed his eyes at Shiro. “You’re not doing that again.”

 

“Wh--again?!”

 

“Yes, _again!_ You think this is the first time you’ve tried to push me away?”

 

Shiro opened his mouth to deny it, but…

 

“Did we have an argument about the Kerberos mission on your side?” he finally asked. “Ended with ‘if you decide to go, don’t expect me to be here when you get back?’”

 

Adam flinched at the words. “Yeah,” he said. “And I regretted it as soon as I said it.”

 

“What happened after that?”

 

“I…” Adam shook his head. “I went to teach my class. Then I came back. And we talked about it some more. Like we’re doing now. And that’s when we decided to go ahead and get married.” He looked up. “What happened on this side?”

 

“You went to teach your class. Then you slept on the couch for the rest of the week. Then we tried to talk about it again and I said a bunch of shit I shouldn’t have, and you left.”

 

“...you fucking _idiot,”_ Adam whispered. He looked up quickly. “Not you. Him. Me. ...whatever.”

 

“In your defense I wasn't exactly making any of this easy on you,” Shiro said. “I saw what it was doing to you and I still--I never blamed you for leaving.”

 

Adam snorted out another soft, humorless laugh. “Yeah, well. _I_ blame me. Anyway… yeah. We worked it out. You promised that’d be your last mission and you’d retire as soon as you got back and whatever time you had left, we’d have that together.” He stared at a spot on the floor a couple of feet in front of the couch. “And then you...you went in just to--you were having such a good week and you felt fine that morning and it was just a fucking physical, they didn’t even do anything but take your blood pressure and stuff, and you just--your heart just _stopped._ ”

 

There was panic tearing at the edges of Adam’s voice, and Shiro rubbed his back to try and keep it at bay until he said what he needed to.

 

“We should have seen that coming, right? It’s a muscle, we should have--they got it started again but…” He shook his head and buried his face in Shiro’s shoulder. “They called me and--and I dropped everything and ran to the hospital and you--they said it happened again after they called me and you’d have to--you might not be able to go home again--” His hands clenched around two handfuls of Shiro’s T-shirt, and Shiro could feel his flesh-and-blood hand shaking.

 

“Shh. Adam.” Shiro wrapped both arms around him, pulled him close and stroked his hair back. “It’s okay. You don’t have to do this.”

 

 _“Yes I do!”_ The words sounded like Adam had to physically tear them out of his throat. “I have to tell you so you understand why I’m so fucking _scared_ right now--” He gulped in a breath. “You told me you wanted me to fly the Kerberos mission for you and I said _hell no,_ I wasn’t going to space for a year while you were in the hospital _._ And the next day Sanda called me into her office and told me she wanted me to fly the damn Kerberos mission because _someone_ recommended me very highly for it and I bet you can’t guess who it was--”

 

Shiro opened his mouth to answer that and then decided against it. Not that he didn’t know. Oh, he knew, all right, because that sure did sound like what he would have done in that situation.

 

“So I told _her_ hell no and then I went to see you, and then you _begged me._ You said if it couldn’t be you, you wanted it to be me and it’d make you happy if I went. You said they fast-tracked you into some kind of clinical trial and you’d be fine by the time I got back and I tried to fight you on that, okay, I really fucking tried because I knew it was bullshit, I didn’t want to go, I _never_ wanted to go, I knew what you were trying to do--but I went anyway. And then all _that_ shit happened, and I crashed in the desert, and then I asked Keith about you and--he said you--” Adam drew a sharp hiccupy-sounding breath. “There wasn’t any clinical trial, there never was, you just said that so I’d--you didn’t want me to stay there and watch you--you knew you’d be gone by the time I got back, you knew it from the start, and he just gave me your ring and told me where they buried you--” And that was all Adam could say. He just clung to Shiro, face pressed into the side of his neck, hands knotted tight into the back of his shirt, his whole body trembling like he was freezing to death.

 

Oh God.

 

What the fuck was Shiro supposed to say to that? He couldn’t say it was okay. He couldn’t say it wasn’t going to happen here. “I’m sorry,” was all he could think of. “God, baby, I’m so sorry.”

 

Adam forced himself to take a couple of slow, deep breaths. Gradually, his grip on Shiro’s T-shirt relaxed but Shiro could still feel him shivering.

 

“I promised I’d stay with you forever,” Adam said when he could talk again. “You know, ‘in sickness and in health’ and all that? I know you didn’t get that far here but like you said, it doesn’t change the fact that I did. _I promised._ And I let you talk me into breaking that promise.”

 

He looked up then, and this--this was the Adam Shiro remembered the most, the one who took absolutely no shit from anyone and least of all from _him._ “I won’t break it again. Right now I am scared to death for you but _I won’t leave you again._ Not unless you can look me in the eye and tell me you want me to leave.”

 

Shiro didn’t even try.

 

“I don’t want you to,” he finally said, dropping his head onto Adam’s shoulder. “I’m scared too, baby. I know I need to go get checked out, you’re right, I’ve known it ever since I got back but I just got you back and now I’m _so fucking scared_ that I’m going to go in there tomorrow and they’re going to tell me--I just--I can’t stand thinking about you being stuck here watching me die when you could be--”

 

“I know.” Adam wrapped his arms around Shiro and rubbed his back. “I get why you wanted me to leave on my side and I get why you didn’t want to tell me here and I know you think you’re protecting me somehow, but... _don’t._ I’d rather you be honest with me.”

 

Shiro buried his face in the side of Adam’s neck. He didn’t use aftershave--he’d always been one of those infuriating people who could go four or five days without shaving and still pass inspection--but there was the ghost of his shampoo and that spicy soap he liked, and Shiro focused on that. “I’m sorry,” he finally said.

 

“Me too.” Adam’s hand came up and curled around the back of Shiro’s neck. Shiro could still feel him trembling, just a little, but his voice was steady. “Are we okay?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

They were quiet for a while. Shiro’s arms crept around Adam’s waist and held on for dear life, and Adam stroked the back of his head.

 

“Can you stay tonight?” Shiro finally asked, and Adam nodded.

 

“Yeah. Of course. Got some training exercises with the MFE team tomorrow,” Adam said. “But I’ll knock off as soon as I can after I land and then I’m all yours. If you’re up to it, I’ll take you to the ramen bar. Or cook you something. Or just… whatever you need.”

 

Shiro breathed out a little laugh against Adam’s neck. “Yeah… I think I’m going to need some comfort food by the time they’re done with me.”

 

“Okay.”

 

Their coffee had long since gone cold, so Adam got up and poured it out. He turned out the light on the way back.

 

Shiro was usually Adam’s body pillow when they ended up spending the night on the couch like this, but this time when he went to stretch out first, Adam stopped him. And instead, he lay down first and pulled Shiro down onto his chest.

 

“I should be _your_ pillow,” Shiro mumbled, but he settled down onto Adam’s chest anyway. “That... that took a lot out of you.”

 

Adam rubbed his back, soft and slow and soothing. “You needed to hear it and I needed to get it out, Keith was the only one who knew about any of it--the one on my side, I mean, and... yeah.“ He let out a deep breath. “Don’t worry about that. Just try and get some rest.”

 

Rest, maybe. Sleep... absolutely not.

 

* * *

 

_Nothing they do can possibly be any worse than what the Galra did to me._

 

That quickly became a sort of mantra for the day. Shiro told himself that, and kept telling himself that, again and again through all the scans, all the questions, all the shit they had to do to him. He hated doctors and needles and all that stuff to begin with but after what he’d been through on that prison ship… _no,_ he thought, _don’t go there, you can freak out all you want later. Get through this first. You’ve been through worse, you can get through some medical tests without having a fucking breakdown._

 

They didn’t lecture him about putting this off. He almost wished they would.

 

By the time they let him put his uniform back on and get the hell out of there, it was late in the afternoon and he figured he might as well just go back to his room. They’d call him tomorrow to let him know what they found, they said. So, great. He got to wait on pins and fucking needles for a call that’d tell him what he already knew.

 

He couldn’t even muster up enough willpower to hang his uniform up. He just threw it over the back of the chair in his bedroom, put on his sweatpants and his sloppiest oversized black T-shirt (for dulling the glare from his shoulder when he couldn't sleep, and he didn’t count on getting much sleep tonight), and flopped face-down on the couch.

 

He didn’t silence his phone, and when it pinged he almost jumped out of his skin. It was just a text notification, though. And it was from Adam.

 

_Doing OK?_

 

Shiro snorted out a soft laugh. _Been worse._

 

There was a pause. _Gonna guess you’re not up to going out for dinner. I’ll bring you sth._

 

 _Thanks,_ Shiro sent back, and he dropped his phone back on the table and hid his face in the couch cushions.

 

He thought he heard Adam’s door open across the hall at some point, but he didn’t hear a knock on his.

 

A little later he got another text.

 

_Open the door for me, gonna have my hands full._

 

Okay? Whatever. Shiro got up, padded to the door, and touched the panel. A few seconds later Adam’s door opened, and then he turned to pick something up. He stuck his head out the door and looked both ways to make sure the coast was clear, and then he scooted the four steps across the hall with an electric pressure cooker cradled in his arms.

 

“Hey.” Shiro couldn’t help smiling a little despite the Godawful day he’d had when he saw all of this. “You’re not supposed to have that in the dorm.”

 

“Guess how many fucks I give,” Adam said, leaning in to give Shiro a quick kiss before he deposited the thing on the kitchenette counter. The air in his wake smelled a lot like curry. “You can write me up later. Shit, you don’t have any serving spoons in here, do you? Don’t answer that. Be right back.” Adam scooted back out into the hall, and Shiro figured since the thing was unplugged, it was safe to peek under the lid.

 

Yep. Curry and rice. Probably from scratch. It was his favorite comfort food, and it occurred to Shiro that he hadn’t told this version of Adam how he liked it-- particularly how he liked it when he wasn’t feeling well or was having a bad day, but it smelled great. He didn’t have a lot of dishes or silverware in here, but he had two bowls and two spoons and that was all they’d need.

 

Adam came back in with a big serving spoon and a couple of sodas. “Go sit,” he said, waving Shiro towards the couch. “I got this.”  He loaded up their bowls and brought them to the couch.

 

It was _exactly_ the way he liked it on a bad day--potatoes, carrots, onions, and tender chunks of stew beef, toward the mild end of the spice spectrum with just a little bit of a tingle, and with a tiny bit of peanut butter mixed in. It was warm and filling and soothing and perfect.

 

They ate in silence, and then Adam took their bowls to the sink, washed them, and put them away. He put the lid on the leftovers and promised to pack them up for Shiro’s lunch tomorrow.

 

“I don’t think I’m going in,” he said. “Everything I need to do I can do from here and I just…” He breathed out a soft, weary laugh. “I’m gonna be a wreck, nobody around here gets paid enough to put up with that.”

 

Adam nodded and sat back down next to him. “Then I’ll just leave it in your fridge. I’ve got a class to run through the simulators and some pencil-pushing bullshit that can’t wait, but after that I can come stay with you, if you want. You want me to stay tonight?”

 

“Yeah.” Shiro leaned his head on Adam’s shoulder, and Adam wrapped both arms around him and kissed the top of his head. “I’d like that.”

 

“Okay. Let me go take care of some stuff real quick.” Adam kissed him again and got up. “Be right back.”

 

Adam packed up the leftovers and then ran the illicit pressure cooker back to his room. He came back a few minutes later with a nice thick blanket and a couple of pillows.

 

“Listen,” he said as he dropped his armload of bedding on the couch, “I know we’re taking this stuff slow and I promise I’ll behave but… the bed’s a hell of a lot more comfortable than the couch.”

 

Shiro couldn’t help but laugh a little at that. Well… Adam wasn’t wrong, and after the day he’d had… yeah, he could use all the comfort he could get.

 

* * *

 

It was dark and the air was hot and damp and it stank of sickness and sweat and too many unwashed bodies crammed into too small a space for way too long. In these conditions you either learned to sleep standing up, or you sat or lay in whatever filth coated the floor.

 

Or you just stayed awake until sheer exhaustion left you no choice in the matter.

 

Shiro was exhausted, yes, but not enough so to guarantee him any sleep. There was little to no chance of getting comfortable even under the best circumstances. But now... forget it. His arm ached when he held it still; trying to move it felt like grinding broken glass into the muscles he still had there. And they expected him to _fight_ with this thing?

 

He thought he heard footsteps outside the cell, but he wasn’t sure whether they were real or imaginary until the faint purple light from outside the cell dimmed even more, blotted out by an ugly purple face.

 

“Bad news. We’re gonna need this cell for a VIP,” the guard sneered through the little window in the door, yellow eyes fixed on Shiro through the dark of the cell. “So make your peace with whatever you call God, we’ll be back to kill the lot of you later.” The guard’s face melted, ran, shifted--still purple, still yellow-eyed, but more human, somehow familiar, and the bit of armor Shiro could see through the little window turned into the collar of a white coat. “Don’t worry. We’ll call you soon as we know something.”

 

* * *

 

Shiro’s eyes snapped open. He felt a hand on his shoulder and he thought he heard someone cry out, and he wasn’t entirely sure it wasn’t him.

 

He looked around, trying to get his bearings. Familiar clean walls. Familiar clean bed. Pale blue-white glow from his new shoulder. Warm hand on his other shoulder. Cold sweat on his forehead. The smell of laundry soap and Adam’s shampoo and the curry rice they’d had for dinner.

 

“Shh,” Adam whispered. “It’s okay. Just a bad dream.”

 

Just a dream. He was safe in his own bed, with Adam rubbing his back and whispering soft, reassuring things to him.

 

He lay back down, buried his face in Adam’s neck, and huffed out a long, shaky breath.

 

“You’re okay,” Adam whispered into the side of his head.

 

Shiro wished he could believe that.

 

* * *

 

A sort of hazy, half-awake state was the closest Shiro came to sleeping for the rest of the night. Every time he started to cross the line into sleep he’d find himself in that filthy overcrowded cell again, or strapped to a table again, or being marched God-knew-where again, and he’d jolt awake and have to reorient himself to reality all over again. Adam didn’t sleep much either because every time Shiro snapped awake, Adam would be rubbing his back or stroking his hair or otherwise trying to comfort him back to sleep.

 

Then Adam got up and left to take care of his class and his administrative crap and without the soothing warmth of another safe body in the bed with him, Shiro couldn’t even keep his eyes closed.

 

So he got up, put on some coffee, opened up his laptop, turned on some music, and got to work.

 

That kept his mind off things for a while, but there wasn’t a lot of work he could do from his room, and not really anything he needed to physically go in for. And there was still way too much of the day left.

 

He checked his phone. He hadn’t muted it, but if the call went straight to voicemail as it sometimes did--

 

It hadn’t. No calls, no voicemail, no texts.

 

It was barely eleven in the morning.

 

Shiro scrubbed every surface in his bathroom. Then he wiped down the kitchenette counter and scrubbed the sink. He opened up the fridge with the intent of cleaning it out, but there was nothing in it to clean out--just last night’s leftovers. He wiped it out anyway. While he was doing that, his phone pinged. A text.

 

It was from Keith. _Anything yet?_

 

 _No,_ Shiro sent back.

 

It was a quarter to noon. The energetic rock playlist that had helped him focus on work was starting to grate on his eardrums. He changed it to one of those “chill study beats” playlists.

 

Maybe he should call them.

 

He sat there with the Neurology department’s number up and his thumb hovering over the “call” button until his phone went back to sleep on its own.

 

He vacuumed the main room and the bedroom. He thought about doing a load of laundry, but... what if they called while he was in the laundry room? That really wasn’t a call he wanted to take in a common area.

 

What time did Adam say he’d be back? Did he even say?

 

Half past noon.

 

No missed calls. No voicemails. No texts.

 

He dusted the tables, the bookshelves, the nightstand, the dresser. He made the bed, folded Adam’s extra blanket up and laid it neatly across the foot, and straightened the row of shoes next to the bed. When was the last time he’d polished his boots? Did he even have a shine kit anymore?

 

The music was starting to annoy him again. He looked around for some ambient or new age or something. Everything he found grated on his nerves in some way or another and eventually just gave up and turned it off.

 

Should he call them?

 

Surely they’d had enough time to go over at least some of his shit, surely they should have known _something_ by now.

 

_We’ll be back to kill all of you in a little while._

 

_We’ll call you when we find out._

 

His phone pinged--a text notification. It was from Adam. _On my way._

 

Oh, thank fucking God.

 

* * *

 

Adam took two steps into Shiro’s room, looked around, saw surfaces utterly devoid of dust or clutter, and seemed to deflate a little. “Ah shit,” he groaned, “did I miss a memo about a room inspection?”

 

Shiro shook his head and then dropped it onto Adam’s shoulder. “Keeping busy.”

 

“So... nothing yet,” Adam said, and Shiro shook his head again.

 

The waiting should have been easier with Adam there. And it was, at first. Adam heated up some leftover curry for two and found them something relaxing on TV, and they curled up on the couch together to eat and watch TV and that helped distract Shiro for a while.

 

But they’d finished their lunch and finished their show and started looking for another one and it was going on two in the afternoon and still... nothing.

 

_We’ll call you as soon as we know something._

 

_Hey prisoners, something came up. Guess you get to live a couple more vargas. Maybe a quintant or two? I dunno, I just work here. We’ll keep you posted._

 

God, _fuck this._

 

“I’m calling them,” Shiro finally said, and if there was a wobble in his voice or a little trembling in his hand as he reached over for his phone, Adam didn’t say anything about it. He didn’t want to call them, he’d just spent the last few months _avoiding_ them, but at this point throwing himself on the sword sounded better than sitting in his cell waiting.

 

So to speak.

 

Adam just wrapped an arm around him and held him tight. Did the Galra do that shit to _him?_ They’d done everything else the same, far as Shiro knew--scarred him, tortured him, experimented on him, forced him to fight, cut off his arm. Did they play that stupid game with him too?

 

He pulled up Neurology’s number, hit “call” before he could lose his nerve, and put it on speaker. Somehow, he didn’t know how, but somehow he managed to keep his voice steady while he told the receptionist who he was and what he was calling about.

 

“Let me put you on hold for a minute and check on that, Captain,” he said, and ...ugh. God forbid the Garrison cough up a little bit of money for some hold music that wasn’t public domain garbage. Adam rolled his eyes and made a gagging face at it, and that helped take the edge off a little.

 

One of the nurses picked up next, asked him a couple of questions, then put him back on hold.

 

Then one of the doctors. And this one seemed to have some idea what was going on but not the whole picture--apparently there was something so unusual about his case that the damn _department chief_ got called in on it. So she couldn’t say much of anything, or _do_ much of anything except... put him back on fucking hold.

 

And now Shiro knew what he was going to hear. He’d already known it on some level, he’d known it since he started dodging their daily call, but... it was so bad that the _department chief_ was looking at it. It had to be bad. Why else would they have to call the department chief in? He thought he’d have a few months left on the clock but now he was certain that was a generous estimate.

 

He felt Adam’s hand tighten around his and glanced over. Adam didn’t say anything, and he looked like he was trying like hell to keep whatever was going through his mind off his face, but Shiro could see the grayish cast around his eyes and the tension in his jaw and his shoulders and that said enough.

 

“Captain Shirogane?”

 

Adam almost jumped out of his skin at that, and so did Shiro. “Y-yes,” he said.

 

“I’m Dr. Nielson, chief of Neurology and uh... I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but...”

 

Shiro squeezed his eyes shut, and Adam pulled him close.

 

“There’s... there’s clearly been some kind of a mistake or mixup or something here, so unfortunately... I’m going to have to ask you to come back in tomorrow and redo your tests.”

 

Shiro had been bracing for a gut punch. This was a left hook to the temple.

 

 _“Oh, for fuck’s sake!”_ Adam spat, and Shiro couldn’t bring himself to care if Nielson heard it.

 

“What,” he croaked. It didn’t even sound like his own voice, just an autoresponder in his mouth.

 

“I’m sorry, I know how much of your day this is going to eat up and I know how unpleasant it is, but--” There was a sound like a deep sigh, like the kind of noise one would make when throwing up one’s hands in exasperation. “I don’t know how this could have happened, but I know your history and the results I’m looking at right now can’t possibly be yours.”

 

Adam seemed to perk up at that, and Shiro shook his head. He knew what Adam was thinking, dammit, he’d _told_ Adam not to go there--

 

“Like I said, I don’t know how it happened so... just to make absolutely sure it doesn’t happen again, I’m personally going to observe all the tests.”

 

They set up a new appointment, and bless Adam for taking down the details and then hanging up the phone, because Shiro could feel his brain starting to overload, could feel the air he breathed turning to thick black fog and congealing into a hot, prickly lump in his throat and his lungs.

 

He had to do all of it over again.

 

After all of the scans and questions and needles and tests, after the nightmares and the panic held just barely at arm’s length, after all the waiting and the worrying and transfers and shitty hold music, now they were telling him he had to do all of this shit _again._

 

_Good news, prisoners! Looks like we don’t need to kill you after all. Course if any of you want to get on with it anyway, we’ll oblige..._

 

Some of them did, didn’t they?

 

Shiro had considered it, hadn’t he?

 

 _Fuck._ No. He needed to stop thinking about that, it was just making this worse.

 

“Okay,” he heard Adam say through the black fog, “okay, that doesn’t happen, they don’t just _mix up test results_ like that--”

 

Shiro opened his mouth, tried to tell him to stop and couldn’t, so he just shook his head and hoped like hell Adam understood what he meant by it.

 

And maybe he did but that didn’t stop him. “I’m just... I’m just saying, Takashi, what if--”

 

“Stop,” Shiro wheezed, “Adam, please, just _stop--”_ That was all he could get out before the black fog of panic closed in on him and left him doubled over, clutching at his head, fighting for air.

 

“...oh shit.” Adam shut up fast and laid a hand on Shiro’s back. “Oh _shit._ Okay.” Gently, carefully, he took hold of Shiro’s shoulders and pulled him upright again. “Okay. I’ve got you. _Breathe,_ baby.”

 

 _Easy for him to say,_ Shiro thought, and immediately regretted it because, well... Adam did understand panic attacks. He had them too, after all.

 

It felt like he was choking. Like he was drowning in tar. Like he was trying to breathe through a tight wad of coarse wool that had been shoved down his throat. But he closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on filling his lungs while Adam rubbed his back and whispered encouragement, and finally he managed to gulp in a deep breath. Then another, a little slower, a little deeper. And another. Each time it was a little easier, and a little easier still, and finally he felt that acrid fog retreat and that wad of scratchy wool start to dissolve. He drew in one long shaky breath, let it out, and slumped over onto Adam’s shoulder.

 

“I’m sorry,” Adam whispered, reaching up to stroke his hair back from his damp forehead. “Takashi, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to--”

 

“I know.” Shiro nodded and swallowed hard. His throat felt like dry cracked earth. “It’s okay.” He was quiet for a long time, eyes closed, concentrating on Adam’s hand on his back. “When you were on that prison ship... did the guards ever play this stupid game with you where they’d--they’d come tell you they needed the cell for someone else or Sendak said they were wasting too much food on the prisoners and they needed to get rid of some of us or some shit so--”

 

“--so they’d be back in a few vargas to kill us. Yeah. I remember that.” Adam’s hand slid down his spine and back up again, slow and gentle. “And then they’d come back later and tell us there was a change of plans, or they’d be back tomorrow, or--”

 

“And sometimes they’d actually move us all out, tell us they were taking us somewhere else to do it but they’d just put us in another cell and say they’d be back later--then they never came back.”

 

Adam nodded. “And then next time you saw them they’d just be bringing food, like always, if anyone said anything they’d just be like ‘oh, Sendak changed his mind’ or ‘we found a better cell,’ or--one time they straight up said ‘yeah, we were just fucking with you, we were bored.’ And then a couple days later they’d do it again but there was always--in the back of your mind, you were always thinking ‘okay this time they really mean it, they’re really going to kill us.’ and eventually you kind of--” He swallowed hard.

 

“--wished they’d just do it and get it over with,” Shiro finished.

 

Adam was quiet for a while. “That’s what this feels like to you, isn’t it?”

 

Shiro nodded. _Except this time I already know for sure it’s going to kill me,_ he thought, _and I’m just sitting here in the dark waiting for them to tell me when..._

 

But he didn’t say it out loud. “I hate to ask you this,” he said instead, “but... can you go with me?”

 

Adam nodded and held him tight. “Yeah,” he said. “Of course.”

 

“Are you sure? If you’ve got work to do--”

 

 _“Fuck_ work. The MFE pilots can handle themselves for one morning.” Adam wriggled his phone out of his pocket and sent a quick text. “Done. I’m--wait.” He paused, staring out into space for a moment, and then he put his phone away. “Huh. Black-2 says...” He stopped there for a bit, and he seemed to be very carefully considering how to translate whatever his Lion wanted him to pass on. “Black-2 sent warm fuzzies. It’s been worried about you the last couple of days.” He snorted out a soft laugh and gave Shiro a squeeze. “It chewed me out for yelling at you, for what it’s worth.”

 

All right, _that_ image was enough to shake the last of the black fog out of Shiro’s mind.

 

* * *

 

Despite Adam’s gentle prodding to please eat something, Shiro ended up skipping dinner. There was still some leftover curry and it smelled great when Adam heated up a bowl for himself. But between the panic attack before and low-level anxiety about another round of medical bullshit the next day, just the thought of eating anything more solid than a single spoonful of creamy peanut butter made him feel sick to his stomach--and the peanut butter was pushing it.

 

He didn’t sleep worth a damn either, and even having Adam curled up against him didn’t help. Every time he closed his eyes he’d find himself back in that overcrowded cell, with some big purple asshole with Nielson’s voice telling him they just needed to do one more round of tests tomorrow, then one more the next day, and oh, sorry, they forgot the one next week. And _then_ they’d be able to tell him when he was going to die.

 

* * *

 

More scans, more tests, more questions, more needles, more of everything that made Shiro hate doctors and hospitals even before the Galra got him, more of everything that would fuel his nightmares now.

 

It wasn’t any easier knowing that Adam was right out there in the waiting room, but at least this time when they were done he could just go right out there and sit down and rest his head on Adam’s shoulder until they called him back to tell him... whatever the fuck they were going to tell him.

 

It took a long time. Longer than it should have, given that Nielson was watching the whole thing and seeing the results in real time. Long enough that Adam even made some faint noise about seeing if they could go to lunch and get the verdict when they came back, but Shiro’s stomach was still very much not on board with the concept of solid food.

 

So they sat there with Shiro’s head on Adam’s shoulder, watching cat videos on Adam’s phone until Nielson himself finally came out into the waiting room.

 

“Captain,” he said simply. There was a look on his face that Shiro couldn’t quite parse. “Come on back and let’s talk about your results.”

 

Shiro swallowed hard, and Adam gave him a squeeze.

 

“I’ll be here,” he said. “No matter what.”

 

Shiro wasn’t sure whether that made this easier or harder.

 

He followed Nielson back, back through the labyrinth of hallways that led from the Neurology waiting room to his office, and through the door.

 

“Have a seat,” Nielson said, and Shiro did.

 

“Look,” he said, rubbing his forehead, “just tell me how long I’ve got and get it over with.”

 

Nielson didn’t say anything for a while. But he pulled up a hologram.

 

“This,” he said, “is what an average twenty-five-year-old man’s neuro scan looks like.”

 

Okay. Shiro nodded, just because he had no idea where this was going.

 

Nielson pulled up another hologram. Without context, the first one didn’t tell Shiro much of anything. This one, though... even to his layman’s eyes, it looked bad.

 

“This is the last scan we did on you before the Kerberos mission.”

 

He pulled up a third and final hologram and--

 

Wait. What the _hell!?_

 

“And this,” Nielson went on, “is your scan from this morning. Which looks exactly like what I looked at yesterday.”

 

 _There’s no way,_ Shiro tried to say, but nothing came out. _That’s impossible. It can’t be. It looks just like--_

 

“Same goes for all the rest of your tests. Every single one. Yesterday _and_ today. Now do you understand why I needed to call you back in, and why I needed to see this for myself?” Nielson asked. “Captain... do you understand what I’m telling you?”

 

Shiro did. He didn’t believe it. It would take hours for it to even start to truly sink in.

 

But he understood.

 

* * *

 

There were some other issues Shiro figured he should bring up while he was there, and Nielson said that wasn’t really his specialty, but he could pretty comfortably confirm that it was what Shiro thought it was, and he did know someone who could help with that.

 

“So,” he said, opening the door to let Shiro back out into the waiting room, “I’d like you to come back in six months and if nothing’s changed, we’ll likely be done here.”

 

Adam must have caught at least some of that, because he definitely perked up at the “six months.”

 

“Okay. Great. Thanks.” Shiro felt like he should have said more, but... he still wasn’t sure any of this was actually happening.

 

Adam was already out of his chair and ready to get them both the hell out of here. “I heard ‘six months,’” he said once they were back out into the hall outside the Neurology department. “So... at least that, I guess.”

 

Shiro sputtered out a helpless laugh. Well... he wasn’t wrong.

 

“What?” Adam peered down at him over his glasses, searching his face for an answer. “Takashi?”

 

“I, uh. I asked him how long I have and he said the best he could guess assuming I don’t get blown up in the line of duty or whatever was...” He shook his head. God, this still didn’t feel real. “About another forty to sixty years.”

 

And having said it out loud himself, heard it in his own voice... then it finally started to feel maybe a _little_ bit real.

 

“Wh--” Adam’s eyes went wide. “Did you say _years!?”_

 

“Yeah.” Shiro threw his arms around Adam’s shoulders. “It’s--I’m not--it’s _gone._ He said he can’t even tell I was ever--” Another little burst of helpless laughter bubbled up out of his chest, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. “I’m okay, baby. _I’m okay.”_

 

And then it was all he could do to hang on, because Adam threw both of _his_ arms around Shiro’s waist and lifted him clean up off the floor. “Are you _shitting me!?”_ he spluttered out, and that just made Shiro laugh even more. “It’s-- _how!?”_

 

“I don’t know! He doesn’t either, maybe--you were right about the body, I guess? I kinda don’t want to question it too much, I just--I can’t believe it--”

 

Adam just hung on to him and laughed and sobbed into his shoulder, and Shiro couldn’t help crying a little himself.

 

He thought he’d never see thirty... and now he had all this time ahead of him, he had a _future,_ and for the first time since they diagnosed him he’d actually be able to think about the years ahead without that countdown timer hanging over him.

 

He’d forgotten what that felt like.

 

Forty to sixty more years. That was a lot of life ahead of him, and he knew one thing he definitely wanted to do with it. But he knew there was some work he’d need to do first.

 

“Listen,” he said, pulling back just enough to reach up and brush Adam’s tears away with the pad of his thumb. “I asked him about some of that other stuff. The panic attacks and nightmares and stuff like that.”

 

Adam snorted out a little laugh. “Yours or mine?”

 

“Yes.” Shiro returned that little laugh and kissed him on the nose. “No. Mine, but... yeah. We _both_ need help. You know that, right?”

 

Adam nodded and shut his eyes.

 

“We’ll talk about it later, but long story short--” Shiro gave Adam’s shoulders a little squeeze. “He said he could put me in touch with someone who can do that, and I took him up on it. And maybe it’d be a good idea for you to talk to her, too.” Shiro let Adam go--not entirely, he kept one arm around Adam’s shoulders, and Adam kept one around his waist, but enough that they could start heading for the exit. This was a busy corridor, and probably not the best place for serious conversations like this, much less full-body hugs. “Shit,” he said on the way out, “I need to tell Keith--”

 

“--and I’m starving,” Adam said. “How about you?”

 

All of a sudden, Shiro realized his stomach was pretty okay with the idea of eating something. In fact, it was very much okay with that. Man... he was _really_ hungry all of a sudden.

 

He did the math: one spoonful of peanut butter... plus about sixteen hours... minus one major source of anxiety in his life... oh. Shit.

 

Adam just sighed and took out his phone. “Let’s kill two birds with one stone here, huh? Pick somewhere while I see if--hey, kiddo. You busy? ...you hungry? Well, we--no, God no, don’t go to the chow hall, they’ve got fucking hot dogs today--”

 

“Language,” Shiro warned, gently elbowing Adam in the side. Then they both laughed, because they knew perfectly well he didn’t mean it.

 

“Where are you? ...Okay. Stay put. We’re coming to get you. ...I don’t know. I made Takashi pick. What are we having, Takashi?”

 

“Uh--I, uh--” Okay, this was ridiculous. Shiro could officially eat or drink literally anything he wanted now without ever having to worry about side effects or headaches or any of that bullshit ever again--and he was drawing a blank. “Something... spicy?” he finally stammered.

 

Adam rolled his eyes. “We’re still working on that,” he said to Keith. “We’ll figure it out on the way, I guess. ...well, because Takashi has some good news. ...no, he’ll tell you when we get there. Nope. No spoilers. Okay. See you.” He hung up and shoved the phone back in his pocket. “Spicy, huh?”

 

They stepped outside into a sunny afternoon. Earlier that morning, he’d been too worried and too scared to appreciate the clear sky and the mild breeze. Now, Shiro had to stop for a second to enjoy the feel of sunlight on his skin and Adam’s hand in his, and Adam seemed to understand.

 

He knew this wasn’t going to fix everything overnight. He still had a whole hell of a lot of really ugly issues to work on.. Not to mention the whole thing where they were still in the middle of a war against at least five different factions of hostile aliens. But it was one less thing to keep him up at night, one less nagging fear weaving itself into the background noise of his life.

 

And he’d need to talk to Adam later. About a lot of things. About the mistakes he made the first time, the mistakes he doesn’t want to repeat. About seeing that therapist.

 

And, of course, about the next forty to sixty years.


End file.
